A Burning in the Bones (Waxways #3)

Chapter 48 Mercy Whitaker

48 MERCY WHITAKER

They’d not reached the actual chamber yet, but Mercy could hear a voice whispering to her. Just on the edge of hearing. She thought she heard her name. Spoken in her grandmother’s voice. Then in Devlin’s. She didn’t listen to their silent pleas because she knew they weren’t real. The others showed varying degrees of agitation. The only solution was to keep moving.

“Once we’re inside, we’ll need warding spells up and ready. We’re going to force Arakyl to feast on that barrier of magic until I’ve established all the visualization spells. Then we’ll work on cutting away the manipulation threads. When that first shield fails, we rotate a new pair in to cast the next ward. Theo, you wanted the first casting?”

He nodded. “I’ll partner with Redding. Remember, it’s not just about creating that initial shield. We have to actively keep feeding that magic. Bolstering it. Even dragons follow Wickham’s law of aggression. That means each new shield has to be powerful enough to keep Arakyl from focusing on the spell that Mercy creates—or else he’ll attack the one person we can’t afford for him to attack. Guion and Win, you’ll be in charge of that second casting. Dahvid, if you—”

“I will focus on destroying the threads,” he said, cutting off the possibility of being commanded. Mercy thought it was clear that the two of them had some sort of history. He was certainly not eager to take an order from a Brood. “We will focus on the threads until those dogs get down to the main chamber. Then we’ll all need to tighten our formation and focus on the immediate threat first.”

When everyone felt confident in the plan, Theo and Redding maneuvered to the front of the cramped antechamber. They began their spellwork. Mercy took a deep and steadying breath as a nearly invisible shield formed in the air. She felt a dark foreboding. As if the eyes of some ancient creature had flickered open and were slowly turning to them. The shield stretched, gossamer and trembling, across the entryway. A final pull on the magic locked the spell into place.

Whispers sounded in the air. Hundreds of different voices. From her past. From her present. From her future—if she even had one outside these walls. Mercy heard them whispering different fates. Ones where she died and worms ate her corpse. In others, she grew immeasurably powerful, ruling over entire kingdoms. Just as suddenly, the voices fell away, leaving a terrible silence. Theo turned back to look at her and his eyes were two lightless pits in a waxen face.

“Come all this way to die?”

Mercy blinked. “What?”

His features had smoothed back out. “Are you ready?”

She knew it had to be Arakyl. Attempting to plant seeds of darkness between them. She offered Theo the most confident nod she could manage and the group began moving. They were greeted by a slight deepening of shadows. Without the light cantrip, she could only see the person directly in front of her. The walls tightened too, forcing them into a crouching walk. The tunnel wound back and forth. It was like they were walking through the belly of an impossibly large snake. Finally, the trail opened back up, depositing them in the main burial chamber.

Light emanated from the dragon’s corpse. Nearly enough to reach where they stood—and from that angle, the chamber appeared untouched. All the normal infrastructure—great steel doors or filtration systems—were absent. The lack of human interference left the air pregnant with heat and bright with twisting colors that kept flickering in and out of her vision, depending on which direction she looked. She felt the substance needling at her protective suit. Probing for weaknesses.

The chamber itself was massive. Large enough that she could only just make out the far wall through the churning fumes. Her eyes finally focused on what they’d come to see. A dragon.

Arakyl .

Even thinking his name felt like a mistake now. An invitation into her mind. Mercy was forced to watch a black-scaled dragon wing through an empty sky. The creature was so large that it blotted out the sun. She knew she was witnessing another time, another world entirely. Before her ancestors ever arrived on this continent.

The same force that had guided her away set her back down like a rag doll. She barely kept her feet—and in the same moment, Theo and Redding’s shield flickered. It was warding off the dragon’s mental attack. With her clarity returned, Mercy performed a quick assessment of the corpse. His size dwarfed the wyverns they’d just ridden on. Most of the dragon’s flesh had rotted away, but only a few of the scales were missing. She counted three or four at most. Those spots were backlit by a purple flame. So, too, were the empty eye sockets. The light made it seem as if he were watching their approach. Still alive. A half-rotted neck ran in a sinuous line back to the body. Mercy was surprised how defenseless he seemed. All that stood between them and Arakyl’s corpse was a slight descent and roughly fifty paces of packed mud. Could it really be this simple?

And then the dead dragon raised his head.

The great skull twisted ever so slightly to face in their direction. Mercy thought she was imagining it. Dragons were known for feeding human minds illusions. But then she heard Theo Brood say in a breathless voice, “ Gods, it can move! ”

The arcane fire swirling inside the creature flashed in warning. She knew those bright swirls were exactly the sort of thing dragons had always used to hunt. A bright light designed to briefly paralyze their prey. Humans had only survived because they were smarter than other creatures.

“Everyone get moving! Now, now, now!”

Her voice was a shove back in the direction of their purpose. Theo and Redding fell into lockstep with one another. Dahvid flanked Mercy on the right. Margaret on her left. She could not see them, but she knew that Guion and Win were quietly bringing up the rear. All of them were moving with a single directive in mind. Halfway across the room, Arakyl unleashed a stream of purple fire at them. The blast struck the center of the shield with force. Theo and Redding barely set their feet in time, skidding back a pace, but it was enough. The shield held. The purple light dispersed. It would have been easy to stare at their back and forth. Watch them pour magic into the shield’s layers as Arakyl prepared another blast of purple light. But that was not her purpose here.

Mercy emptied her mind.

She pretended she was in the operatory with Dr. Horn. Going through the routine list of spells. She was just a doctor. This dragon was just a patient in need of a severance procedure. Mercy’s first spell had that familiar, silver light creeping into the air. She had to work harder than normal to maintain her radius, but the magic held. She pushed it outward before using the next spell to cocoon her and the others from its effect. Before she could cast the third layer, Dr. Horn appeared in her vision. He was walking forward, inspecting what she’d cast. She heard him whispering to remember balance. It was shocking to see him there. Even more shocking when he turned to her, his face covered in those terrible bruises, his jaw dangling unnaturally.

“I will kill you, Mercy Beatrice Whitaker. I will bury you in the darkest part of the earth. Leave you rotting in a place where no one will ever find you… where no light will ever touch…”

There was another blast of purple light. Mercy shook herself. Dr. Horn wasn’t there. It was an illusion. She gritted her teeth, so hard her jaw started to hurt, and began her work again. The sphere she’d cast was thick enough now for the next phase. Distantly, she heard Theo calling out for Guion and Win. They were about to perform the first rotation. Mercy ignored their voices and their movement. Her work was all that mattered.

She set both hands to the edge of the floating sphere. Splayed her fingers as far as they could go—her stunted ones protesting the movement. And then she gave the waiting magic a push. Several things happened at the same time. There was a flash of bright light. A hot white color that briefly blinded all of them. Then the first shield shattered. Guion and Win stepped forward as Theo and Redding retreated. All with flawless timing. Their shield roared forward and it was more than enough to keep Arakyl’s attention. A second later, her own spell found its equilibrium. The magic rippled outward—like a stone thrown into water—and a third light filled the room.

Threads.

It was just like being in the operatory. Bright silvers and fickle reds and luminous yellows. Magic that had always been there. Her spell simply made them visible. She watched them slowly populate around the room. Dozens of threads…

… and dozens and dozens. Mercy watched with growing horror. The spell was revealing more threads than she’d ever seen in any human patient. Great ropes of beaten gold. Smaller cords that looked like slashes of sunrise. The thickest thread she saw protruded from Arakyl’s chest and was a sort of burnished bronze. She knew she wasn’t the only one who could see them. Everyone in their group kept stealing glances up at the complex web that was weaving itself in the air. Even Arakyl seemed briefly distracted. Mercy knew she should keep moving. Rattle off orders to Dahvid and Margaret. But the threads were still appearing. Her last patient had a few hundred. This was well into the thousands. Her task could no longer be called difficult. It was impossible.

I might as well go home. Give up. Surrender to the majesty that is…

“Mercy.”

Dahvid was there. She felt his breath against her neck. A faded mint. He was so close to her, in fact, that she could feel his heart beating against her shoulder blade.

“Mercy. Do not listen to that voice. We need you now. Do you hear me? We need you to tell us what to do. You haven’t moved in over a minute now. Stop listening to him. Stay with us….”

It had seemed like a moment. Mere seconds. Mercy focused on Dahvid’s touch on her shoulder. That mint that smelled so much nicer than the rotting corpse in the room. She slid one hand down to the enchanted saw blade tucked into her belt loop. As her fingers closed around the handle, her confidence returned. It was like setting her feet back on solid ground.

“Tell us what to do first,” Dahvid repeated. “Just guide us.”

She was nodding. “Keep the shields rotating. I need to test the threads. Once I know which ones coordinate with the manipulated, we can start eliminating them….”

But the colors were all wrong. She’d learned the patterns with previous patients. Silver for mentors and teachers. Kin were always some variant of red. The colors she saw filling the room now were different from any she’d seen before. An entirely new pattern. It could be that the fumes were altering their appearance. Or that dragons were different from humans?

All she could do was test them, color by color.

She seized a thread of faded gold. Carefully, she lined up the edge of her handsaw and began to cut. The enchanted teeth caught. Back and forth. She was rewarded with a glimpse: Birds. Dozens of birds in midflight, and then she blinked back to the present. Mercy spied another thread that was the same color just ten paces to the left. She went to it and repeated the same motion. This time she saw a stag, bent over a stream, lapping the water with its pink tongue.

“Animals,” she announced, mostly to herself. “Those light gold threads are for animals. Maybe prey? Remember that….”

Dahvid nodded. She tried to ignore how closely he was watching her as she seized yet another thread and began to cut. Silver threads were for other dragons. She was gifted glimpses of conversations, aerial battles, and more. She heard voices that she knew the world had forgotten long ago. Those threads left her the most disoriented. Twice she needed to be steadied by Dahvid.

At some point, Guion and Win had switched out again. Theo and Redding stepped forward with their group’s third shield spell. Great bursts of purple flame continued striking the edges of their barrier, and Arakyl’s magic seemed to be corroding their defenses faster each time. As if the dragon was learning their magic, adapting to it as any intelligent creature might.

White threads for landscapes. Red threads seemed to connect back to younger versions of Arakyl. She saw what he looked like as a hatchling. No bigger than her. Finally, Mercy found the threads that connected to people. A putrid yellow that looked like pollen. Four testing cuts revealed a pattern. She saw a man sitting on the ramparts of a castle, tapping a bored rhythm against the stones. A woman on a morning walk in a forest. Each image a confirmation, because in each one she saw the familiar red scarf that was being used to spread the manipulation spell.

“It’s these ones,” she announced. “Any that are this shade of yellow.”

Now that she knew the right color, she stepped back and tried to consider the overall portrait again. Just like before, she found the sheer amount staggering. There were hundreds that were that shade. At least one third of the visible connections. She knew there was nothing else they could do but begin. Mercy found the spot where she’d performed the test cut and began sawing back and forth, back and forth. Far less delicate strokes than she’d use in a normal surgery.

Finally, she was through.

The thread writhed briefly in the air. Like a snake rearing back to strike—and then it vanished with a brief gasp of pollenlike dust. Behind her, Dahvid and Margaret had already set to work. She saw them lining up their blades before taking massive swings. Their blades made far quicker work of the threads than her saw.

Another shield failed. Theo Brood called out the transition. Mercy felt a brief wave of heat—but it was met with another new shield. At least their first phase in the plan was working. Methodically, they eliminated every single thread in the section that was blocked off by the summoned ward. “Theo!” she called. “We need to shift. I need access to more threads.”

Dark laughter filled the air. The sound snaked through Mercy’s gut. All of them looked up in time to see a figure high-stepping over the skeletal neck of the dragon. Three shadows glided after him, moving with deadly efficiency. The houndmaster had arrived.